State officials said they are reviewing the actions of 10 employees at two Treasure Coast prisons in incidents where children were shocked with stun guns when visiting for Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day.

The incidents happened on April 23 at the Indian River Correctional Institution and the Martin Correctional Institution, according to the Department of Corrections. Several children, ages 8 through 14, were at the facilities for the educational initiative, department spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff said.

Five employees at each facility are on paid administrative leave for the investigation, she said. None of the children were seriously hurt, Rackleff said.
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Thursday, April 23, 2009

VERO BEACH — Two students have been charged with making multiple bomb threats to Vero Beach High School, authorities said.

The Indian River County Sheriff’s Office Thursday charged Taren Lee Stage, 17, with six counts of making a false bomb threat. Deputies pulled Stage out of a class about 10:30 a.m. Thursday and took him to the Sheriff’s Office. The charges are second-degree felonies, which Stage will face as an adult, Sheriff Deryl Loar said.

Early Thursday evening, the Sheriff’s Office also charged Brittany Ann Walker, 18, of the 300 block of 21st Avenue, with one count of making a false bomb threat, according to Walker’s arrest affidavit.

Deputies also have identified a “person of interest” in connection with the bomb threats, according to Walker’s arrest affidavit, but that person was not named. Sheriff’s Office spokesman Deputy Jeff Luther declined to release further information, saying the case still is under investigation.

Stage, whose affidavit was not released, implicated Walker when deputies questioned him, according to Walker’s arrest affidavit.

While in custody, Walker told Stage she received a text message that he had been arrested and she knew she “was next,” the affidavit states.

Six bomb threats were called into VBHS since March 3 — four in the last week. One bomb threat was called into Sebastian River High School on March 3. According to the affidavit, in some of the calls, Stage gave the phone to Walker to dial the school and then she’d hand the phone off to the “person of interest.”

The students used three different phones and blocked the phone numbers from appearing on the school’s caller ID system, officials said.

Luther said deputies took their time to make sure they had those responsible for making the calls. (more…)

STUART — A judge Wednesday ordered the former owner of Arthur’s Dockside restaurant to spend a year in the county jail on a tax fraud charge, prompting his wife to burst into tears and break down outside court.

Arthur Dombrose, 71, was also ordered to serve two years of community control and two years of probation.

Standing before Martin Circuit Judge Sherwood Bauer, Dombrose showed little emotion as deputies fingerprinted him and led him away.

Last July Dombrose entered a plea of no contest to a first-degree felony tax fraud charge after failing to pay $187,000 in sales tax collected from customers between March 2005 and April 2006. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — A man authorities said “built out” marijuana grow house interiors was convicted Wednesday afternoon of conspiracy, trafficking in marijuana and racketeering.

Dennis Enrique Rondon, 32, of Port St. Lucie, is the first of about a dozen defendants connected to Global Home Builders Inc., a construction company authorities allege was a cover for a marijuana growing operation, to be tried and convicted.

On Nov. 27, 2007, the father-and-son Global Home owners, Roberto Alberto Cepero, 46, of Port St. Lucie, and Roberto Patricio Cepero, 24, of Miami, as well as Rondon and 18 other people, were arrested in raids yielding 10 marijuana grow houses and more than 400 pounds of marijuana.

Rondon was charged with conspiracy to traffic in marijuana and trafficking in more than 25 pounds of marijuana. On Dec. 12, 2007, a racketeering charge was added.

He equipped houses for growing marijuana; and during the trial that started April 1, jurors were shown light fixtures, wiring and electrical panels taken from seven of the grow houses, as well as numerous marijuana plants ranging in size from about a foot to about 6 feet tall.

“In all, there were more than 100 pieces of evidence,” said Assistant State Attorney Daryl Isenhower, “including over 100 pounds of marijuana, some of it still growing and some of it hung up and drying.”

Jurors deliberated about four hours before reaching the guilty verdict.

Rondon faces at least three years in prison, the mandatory minimum sentence for trafficking, and up to 90 years — 30 for each of the three first-degree felonies. Circuit Judge Larry Schack has scheduled a May 1 status hearing on the case.

By Tyler Treadway, TCPalm.com

VIERA — For five years, the Palm Bay couple considered Gary Sebastian, the father of their 14-year-old daughter’s best friend, a close acquaintance, trusted to protect their child during the girls’ weekend sleepovers or to hang out at their home during get-togethers.

So, they were stunned when they discovered last summer that 41-year-old Sebastian had been sending their daughter inappropriate text messages, mailed her a package filled with sex-related items and provided her with alcohol on at least one occasion.

And they weren’t satisfied Wednesday when a judge sentenced the former Palm Bay firefighter to three and a half years in prison and five years of sex offender probation. (more…)

Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing

A jury has sentenced Ricardo Sanchez Jr. and Daniel Troya to death for killing the Escobedo family of four along Florida’s Turnpike in St. Lucie County.

The federal death penalty is different from the state of Florida’s death sentence in many ways.

Only 51 inmates are on federal Death Row in Terre Haute, Ind. Florida houses 392. Crimes punishable by the federal death penalty include genocide, killing witnesses, in a trial, terrorism and murder committed as part of a drug enterprise.

Florida has executed 67 men and women since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976. The feds have executed three men since Congress reinstated it in 1988. Some of the more famous of those executed were Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of sabotage for selling atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

Here’s some of those executed since 1927:

James Horace Alderman

1927: James Horace Alderman, known as “King of the Rumrunners,” was intercepted by a Coast Guard vessel 30 miles off Florida’s coast. His boat was laden with alcohol during the era of Prohibition. As Alderman boarded the vessel, he pulled out his pistol. When two Coast Guardsmen and a Secret Service agent rushed him, he shot them all dead. Later, his execution was scheduled for the Broward County Jail, but the county wanted it to occur on federal property. So a makeshift gallows was erected at the Coast Guard hangar.

“When this is read I will have passed over the brink of eternity into the Great Beyond. “I would like to state through the medium of The Miami Herald that I am feeling fine, physically, mentally and spiritually. With the wonderful comfort and strength that I received from Jesus Christ, I am assured that when tomorrow comes I will go with smiles of comfort on my face. … “As I sit here in my cell I can look back and see just what caused me to be where I am today. Drunkenness first starts a young man to gambling — and swearing grows on him — and from that step he becomes hardened in his heart in envy and hatred toward mankind. Then, as he grows up, he becomes what you would call educated to crime. Bootlegging and smuggling is the next step. And there are other angles of downfall that lead to the devil. “The money I made neither did me nor my dear family any good. We thought it did, but no. You can see what it has done — a death sentence by hanging — and a broken-hearted family.”

Read the 1929 Time magazine account of his hanging, here. (more…)

VERO BEACH — A man who secretly buried his mother in their back yard to cover up her death will be serving 20 years in state prison for second-degree murder, court files show.

In mid-2008, Vero Lake Estates resident Kelly Smith, 38, argued with his mother, Lynn Schuler, 59, over his unemployment. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — A 63-year-old Port St. Lucie man was sentenced Tuesday afternoon to 30 years in prison for sexual encounters he admitted having with an 11-year-old girl in 2007.

Stephen J. King was sentenced to 30 years for attempted lewd or lascivious molestation of a child under 12 by a perpetrator over 18 and 15 years behind bars for lewd or lascivious exhibition, but Circuit Judge Robert Belanger allowed the terms to run concurrently.
(more…)

Thursday, February 26, 2009

FORT PIERCE — A Jensen Beach man was found guilty late Thursday afternoon of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a Fort Pierce woman at gunpoint in December 2005.

A jury of five men and one woman deliberated about five hours before reaching the verdict. Immediately after the verdict was read, 35-year-old Robert Lee Kenon was sentenced to two concurrent life prison terms.

In a trial that started Wednesday, the victim testified through a Spanish interpreter that she was walking to a store in Fort Pierce that Dec. 22 when Kenon forced her into his car at gunpoint and drove her to a beach, where he touched her breasts and other private parts and tried to have sex with her until she screamed so loudly he stopped.

Afterward, she said, he drove her back to the area where he had picked her up.

Kenon maintained his innocence even after the verdict.
(more…)

FORT PIERCE — A Port St. Lucie woman who forced her adopted children and young adults to sleep on a storage room floor, will spend most, if not all, of the next 20 years in prison, according to TCPalm.com.

Judith Leekin, 63, pleaded no contest late Wednesday afternoon to four counts of aggravated child abuse and four counts of aggravated abuse of disabled adults — some which have mental and physical disabilities.



Circuit Judge Robert Belanger, calling Leekin’s actions “reprehensible,” sentenced her to 20 years in prison, the maximum term called for under a negotiated plea.

Florida law requires Leekin to serve at least 85 percent of her 20-year term.

Belanger allowed roughly the first half of Leekin’s sentence to run concurrently with a 10-year, 10-month term she received in New York City last year for defrauding that state’s adoption system out of $1.68 million that was supposed to go toward taking care of the adoptees.

For more on this story, see www.tcpalm.com